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DELIVERED AT 



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RICHARD BUSTEED, ESQ., 



FEIDAY, JULY 4tli, 1862. 



0. S. WESTCOTT & CO., PKINTERS, 
No. 79 John Street. 

1862. 







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/^f 



OEATION. 



We are to-day actors in the grandest drama of real life ; 
we stand upon the threshold of momentous events, and touch 
the garment of occurrences which are to shape the future con- 
dition of a Continent. 

Republican Institutions, and their chief feature, the capacity 
of man for self-government, are upon trial before the assem- 
bled world. 

To this strange political and social entanglement the Amer- 
ican people sustain the relation of both the contending parties. 
A large minority on the one side have inaugurated, and are 
carrying on, a war against the Constitution and the Federal 
Union, and attempt to cover their conduct beneath the shield 
of a justifiable revolution ; for this purpose, and with a view 
to disrupt the old government, they have organized rebellion 
into an appearance of sovereignty, and have sent forth to the 
world an appeal to " the last argument of kings," and a dec- 
laration of hatred for, and independence of, the institutions of 
the United States of America. 

On the other hand, the majority of the people, a majority 
composed of the better intellect, greater wealth, and more 
liberal instincts, stand up for the government, under which the 
nation has grown to be a chief power in the earth, and by ex- 
pressions of individual opinion and legislative enactment, have 
solemnly declared, their unalterable purpose, that there shall 
be no severance of the parts which constitute us one country — 
that, in the language of instruction to one of their represen- 
tatives at a foreign Court, there shall be, on all the soil con- 



secrated to freedom and baptized at the font of American inde- 
pendence, or by the American people since acquired, or here- 
after, in the order of things and the Providence of God, by 
them to be acquired, " only one nation and one government, 
and that there is not now, nor has there been, nor will there be, 
any, the least idea of suffering a dissolution of this Union, to 
tako place in any way whatever.*' 

Just so distinct are the views of the combatants, and just 
so irreconcilable the differences which exist between them. 

Nothing is simpler than the proposition that there can be no 
adjustment of the quarrel, and that the absolute submission of 
one to the demands of the other, is the only method by which 
the matter in dispute can be disposed of. 

It is of the utmost consequence to those immediately con- 
cerned that, in so grave an affair, their cause shall be just, and 
their motives and aims such as to sanctify the means adopted 
by them, to^ effectuate the ends they propose. This conse- 
quence is aggrandized by the fact that the American people 
have in charge the future of rational liberty, man's equality, 
and true representative government. For the preservation of 
each of these, we are responsible to posterity. 

All mankind, and especially the enslaved and oppressed of 
mankind, are concerned in the civil struggle into which this 
nation has been plunged by the madness of many and the 
wickedness of a few. As this struggle terminates, we main- 
tain national unity and power, or become separated into petty 
factions, contemptible and puerile, the weakest to be preyed 
upon by the strongest, and the strongest in turn, to be the spoil 
of any considerable foreign rival. As it terminates, we are a 
nation of bankrupts, or unrivalled in the sources of material 
and political affluence ; as it terminates, the memory and act 
of our fathers will be revered or derided. God save the Re- 
public ! 

In this connection I propose to consider, how the struggle 

OUGHT TO TERMINATE, HOW IT WILL TERMINATE, AND WHEN ? 

To present a sufficient answer to the first of these inquiries, 



/3o 



it will be necessary to examine the grounds upon which the 
contestants claim success should of right crown their par- 
ticular designs. To this it is not material to go into a formal 
examination of the origin of our government. The origin of 
the government belongs wholly to the past. It concerns us 
now to know whether the government is to be maintained, 
and by what means it is most likely this result can be 
reached. 

The question before us to day is not as to the causes which 
impelled the separation of the North American colonies from 
England, or whether these were sufficient to justify our revo- 
lutionary ancestors. " The logic of accomplished results," is 
the completest vindication the men of '76 could desire. Judged 
by the standard of increased prosperity and good to the race, 
our fathers have eulogists in every improved human condition, 
in every success of civilized life, and in every triumph of con- 
stitutional liberty. They need neither poetry nor oratory to 
sound their fame. Every gathered harvest — every successful 
adventure — every increasing source of national revenue — 
every exhibition of charity or religion — each, in its turn, sings 
a poean in their praise. The question of concern, as I have 
suggested, is whether their work shall be allowed to remain, 
or whether a new state of things shall take its place, and 
crude experiment be substituted for ripe experience. 

Nothing is more certain than that the founders of the Re- 
public intended that it should exist for ever in concrete ; that 
it should be as incapable of incohesion as a ray of light or a 
glance of the eye. 

Before the convention of the memorable 7th of October, 
1765, when committees from nine colonies met in New- York 
to discuss the policy of forcible resistance to the Stamp Act, 
the idea of an indissoluble Union, as the future destiny of the 
struggling colonies, had filled the minds of the people. The 
coming event was clearly discernible. Its lengthening shad- 
ows proclaimed the doom of tyranny and king-craft, and ere 
yet purpose had taken tangible outline and shape, Patrick 



Henry — gifted with prophetic power, exclaimed, " All Amer- 
ica is thrown into one mass — where are your land-marks — 
your boundaries of colonies ? They are all thrown down. 
The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New- 
Yorkers, and New-Englanders, are no more. I am not a Vir- 
ginian, but an American;" and before the adoption of the 
federal Constitution, and while the states were only linked 
together as friendly confederates for common defence and 
mutual welfare, they adopted the title of United Stales of 
America, and the 13th article of their league declared that 
their union should be perpetual. This, in 1778. Nine years 
afterwards, the people of the United States — not the politi- 
cians, nor the wire-pulling leaders, not the directors of party 
cauoases, nor the selfish place-seekers — the people of the 
states, who before were united by the articles of confedera- 
tion, " in order to form a more perfect union" among them- 
selves, " establish justice, insure their domestic tranquillity, 
provide for their common defence, promote their general wel- 
fare, and secure the blessings of liberty to themselves and 
their posterity," ordained and established the Constitution to 
defend the principles of ivhich six hundred thousand men in 
arms are to day on the fields of sanguinary strife. 

This compact was made by and between the people ; it 
was intended to be, and is, a perpetual contract of alliance ; it 
is indissoluble in its nature, as it is in the terms used to ex- 
press its inseparableness. It is " a covenant running with the 
land," and the heirs, if they take the inheritance, cannot 
avoid the conditions which their ancestors imposed upon its en- 
joyment. The agreement cannot be avoided or altered except 
in the express manner provided, or by the concurrence of all 
the parties in interest. It is too late for South Carolina to say 
to Massachusetts, " I don't like you, and I won't live with you." 
If the Palmetto state did not desire the association, she should 
not have entered into the Union. Being in, by God's help, 
she shall stay. She shall neither bluster out, nor fight out, 
nor secede out, nor skedaddle out. New- York, too, is a joint 



/s/ 



tenant with Mississippi and Georgia, and it looks very much 
as if the Knickerbockers would enjoy the whole estate of the 
Tadpoles and Buzzards, hy mere right of survivorship. 

It is asked : Is there, then, no power inherent in a people to 
change their government ? Are they forever to remain station- 
ary in their ideas, and so arrest the progress of the mind, and 
its capacity for improvement ? Certainly not. No such exi- 
gence has occurred here. The difficulty with rehellion is, that 
the majority of the people do not desire change, and when 
they do, the Constitution itself provides how it shall be altered, 
or amended, or substituted for another. Congress, on applica- 
tion of two thirds of the members of both its houses, or of 
two thirds of the legislatures of the several states, is obliged 
to call a convention for proposing amendments to the Consti- 
tution, and if these propositions are subsequently ratified by the 
legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by Con- 
ventions in three fourths of them, the amendments become 
part of the organic law. Now it is a well-known legal 
maxim, ''^ expressio unius est exclusio alterius ;''"' the naming 
of an express mode by which a thing may be done, excludes 
its performance in any other than the given manner. And, in 
the language of Mr. Madison, the Constitution " being a com- 
pact among the states in their highest sovereign capacity, and 
constituting the people thereof one people for certain purposes, 
it is not revocable or alterable at the will of these states indi- 
vidually, as the constitution of a state is revocable at its in- 
dividual will, and no state can at pleasure release itself there- 
from and set up for itself. The compact can only be dissolved 
by the consent of the other parties, or by usurpations or 
abuses of power justly having that eftect." 

When the great North, and the wise East, and the brave West, 
get ready for inglorious national oblivion, the vain, supercilious 
and barbaric South, may play the hand of empire alone ; but 
until then, her boasted chivalry will be made to march and keep 
step to the music of an undivided Union. When three fourths 



8 



of our entire people shall have approved the amendments to 
the Constitution whicli shall have been proposed by two thirds 
of their number, the so-called " Confederate States" will have 
a new constitution, but not until then. Grod hasten the hour ! 
So let every lover of liberty pray. So only shall we escape 
the withering sarcasm which taunts us with our boasted free- 
dom while it points its scornful finger at four millions of hu- 
man beings in bondage and in chains ! When that day comes, 
the Genius of Liberty, herself emancipated from the fetters 
of a written code, will shed a truer light on the American 
mind. Then shall our anthems to Liberty not be drowned in 
the dissonant cry of the manacled slave. Our incense will not 
be driven before the hot breath of an oppressed and servile 
race, but rise to the throne of God, an honest, as well as 
grateful sacrifice ! There will be in the new constitution no 
saving clause, no ambiguous provision in favor of man's right to 
hold his fellow-man in perpetual bondage ; the waters of freedom 
will cover the face of the whole empire, and slavery find no 
rest upon it for the sole of her foot. The source of all our na- 
tional misfortunes — the disturbing element in our life — the 
cancer in our body politic will be destroyed forever. Our cause 
of shame, and sin, and sorrow, will cease further to afHict our- 
selves, and exasperate humanity. We will then have a con- 
stitution as well as a country, to which an American can refer 
with pride. We will have a consistent theory of government, 
and a Declaration of Independence concurrent in sentiment 
and expression with the law of the land. 

For one, I desire the change. ' While I will obey and faith- 
fully observe all that the Constitution of my country requires, 
I yet wish the supreme law to be founded on the principles of 
God's eternal justice, and to square with His golden rule. I 
desire that the law of might shall be the law of right. As 
the case now stands, my moral nature shrinks while I yield to 
the command that, if the enslaved escape into a society where 
freedom is not dependent upon complexion, he shall be deliv- 
ered up on the demand of his owner, and so a stronger mana- 



/Jl^ 



cle put upon him for obeying an irresistible and universal in- 
stinct ? Men and brethren, ought such things be ? 

" Can such things be, 
And overcome us like a summer's cloud 
Without our special wonder ?" 

I frankly confess I want an amendment of the Constitution 
on this subject, T believe that if this civil war, which the 
slave oligarchists have fomented, shall, of itself, sow the 
death-seeds of African bondage among us, the harvest of self- 
respect the nation will thereby reap, and the consideration it 
will thereby gain, will be worth more than the cost of the 
war. 

A most distinguished American, who filled the highest 
office in the people's gift, and who brought to the discharge of 
its duties the aid of a blameless life, a cultivated mind, a 
comprehensive intellect, and a long experience, writing on this 
subject, says : " The impression produced on my mind by the 
progress of this discussion is, that the bargain between free- 
dom and slavery, contained in the Constitution of the United 
States, is morally and politically vicious ; inconsistent with 
the principles upon which alone our revolution can be justified ; 
cruel and oppressive, by riveting the chains of slavery, in 
pledging the faith of freedom to maintain and perpetuate the 
tyranny of the master, and grossly unequal and impolitic, by 
admitting that slaves are at once enemies, to be kept in sub- 
jugation ; property, to be secured and restored to their owners ; 
and persons, not to be represented themselves, but for whom 
their masters are privileged with nearly a double share of 
representation. The consequence has been that this slave 
representation has governed the Union. Benjamin, portioned 
above his brethren, has ravened as a wolf." 

For these, and my own, and kindred sentiments on this 
question, I invite from flippancy, ignorance, or sin, some bet- 
ter objection than calling the person who holds them agitator, 
abolitionist, and the like. I invite these and all disapprovers 



10 



to talk less and think more, and to study the history of their 
country, and the sentiments and opinions of her statesmen, 
patriots, and guides. 

That cause is indeed bad for which nothing that is neces- 
sary, expedient, or good, can be urged as a reason why it 
should succeed. This is the exact plight of rebellion. Nor 
traitor, nor sympathizer with treason, can to-day assign any 
fair, just, or reasonable pretext for the precipitation on our 
beloved land of a catastrophe so appalling in its proportions 
that all Christendom is disturbed and anxious. 

Why did these southerners make war upon the country, 
converting their own domain into a receptacle of stolen goods, 
and the hiding-place of mercenaries, murderers, and madmen, 
and ours into one vast recruiting tent ? Tell me, you, cow- 
ardly and traitorous northman, who talk about peace before 
the last armed foe has expired on the soil his attainted blood 
defiles, or of compromise, while yet the walls of our hospitals 
resound with the groans of the mangled, and are damp with 
the death-dew of the expiring? Tell me, you, sneaking, 
hypocritical, mean, envious England, with professions of good- 
will to us on your false lip, and hatred and all uncharitable- 
ness to us on your falser heart ? Tell me, you, weak imitator 
of the virtues and base servitor of the vices of the Bonaparte, 
with your proffered mediation in a neighbor's quarrel ? Tell 
me, you, traitors Davis, Pickens, Stevens, and Floyd ? what do 
you say provoked you to the point where forbearance ceased 
to be a virtue ? 

What had we of the North usurped that belonged to you ? 
I inquire not now of what some among us may have said. I 
challenge any act of usurpation by the non-slaveholding 
states against your rights as members of the confederacy. 
Facts are incontrovertible. What had we done ? What pro- 
vision of the federal Constitution had we violated ? For once 
lay aside your declamation and abuse, and soberly and truth- 
fully state your grievances. 

You know, and we know, and the world knows, that we 



/J3 



11 



made no encroachment upon your reserved rights as a party 
to the compact between your fathers and ours. You know, 
also, that we have been so terrified at your reiterated threats 
against the family peace and general welfare, that, in our 
anxiety to preserve national concord, we have sacrificed per- 
sonal honor and state pride. You called us " mud-sills" and 
" greasy mechanics," until labor almost began to be ashamed 
of its Grod-given dignity. Y^'ou beat our representatives in the 
national council chambers because they expressed the views 
of those whom they served. Y'^ou denied us freedom of 
speech in all your borders. This and much else, before the 
last burden which broke our uncomplaining patience into ac- 
tive, and, as you are destined to learn, terrible resistance and 
deserved retribution. 

But what had we done ? How sinned against you ? In 
1820 you wanted a geographical limit assigned to your pe- 
culiar institution, and we passed the law known as the Mis- 
souri Compromise. You got sick of this when it appeared 
that slavery would not be a gainer thereby, as it was supposed, 
and begged a repeal of the act. It was repealed. In 1850, 
you clamored for further legislation in favor of your property 
in human beings, and the fugitive slave law was placed on the 
nation's statute book. You were the daughter of the horse 
leech. You continually cried, "Give, give!" and we gave. 
We kept giving until we had not an oat left in the bin, and 
on your demand, gave you the bin too. But nothing would 
satisfy your rapacity ; you had resolved to quarrel with us. 

Do you remind me that we did not return your escaped 
slaves ? This is only half the truth. Whenever you came 
after your chattel, with legal proofs of ownership, we caught 
and caged him, and sent him back to you, often at our own 
expense. If you did not think it worth your while to hunt up 
your runaway, it was none of our concern. Sometimes a 
man among us, more of a humanitarian than a juris-consult, 
and better versed in the law of nature than the law of the 
land, illegally, but conscientiously, aided your bondman to 



12 



escape. John Broivn did so, and you hanged him for it I 
Bat no state, as such, and no authority within a state, ever 
hesitated or refused to perform its constitutional obligations 
to you on this head. The contrary of this cannot be truth- 
fully maintained. 

Do you remind me, also, that some of our free states (would 
to God yours were all free) passed what are known as the 
personal liberty bills, and that these enactments were in vio- 
lation of the Constitution? It is true that they did, and that 
they were wholly without warrant for it. But, audi alteram 
partem ! Hear the other side. Not one of these states at- 
tempted to enforce these laws, nor did the judicial tribunals, 
in any instance, pronounce in favor of their validity, and 
several of them very soon repealed the obnoxious enactments. 
Young Wisconsin has done so even since you plunged us into 
an internecine war. 

What else have we done ? AVhat other cause of grievance 
have you growing out of any committed breach of our duty 
towards you ? 

1 hear you go about complaining that, in 1860, a sectional 
party at the North elected a President. In your declaration 
of causes which induced the secession of South Carolina, you 
state, among other things, that a " geographical line has been 
drawn across the Union, and all the states north of that line 
have been united in the election of a man to the high office of 
President, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery." 

This is false, and you know it to be. Mr. Lincoln was 
elected by less than one third of the entire vote cast. You 
know this is true. Figures will not lie to help your cause. 
You set up John C. Breckinridge as a candidate, and tried to 
bully and wheedle the democratic party of the North into the 
support of your sectional, time-serving aspirant. In its death- 
throes, this once great political power redeemed the folly, and 
expiated the wickedness of a life spent in alternate fear and 
wort^hip of you. It refused to honor your idol. The vote of 
this party organization was given to Mr. Douglas, only a few 



/3^ 



13 



irreversible " dough-faces" throwing away their patronage on 
Mr. Breckinridge. The northern states did not unite in the 
election of Mr. Lincoln. 

If Mr. Lincoln be sectional — if his yiurposes are hostile to 
slavery, yo2i have brought the calamity upon yourselves and 
us. The man who omits to do an act he may perform, by 
which the life of his fellow can be saved, is morally guilty of 
murder, if death be the result of his omission, as much as he 
who lies in wait and wilfully kills. You pretend to believe 
that Mr. Lincoln entertained hostile purposes to African 
slavery as it exists among you, and omitted to cast your vote 
for Mr. Douglas, which you knew was the only means to 
prevent the election of the man you charged with enter- 
taining sectional views and unconstitutional prejudices! But 
your want of candor is again transparent. You knew that 
Mr. Lincoln was on record against the subversion of the 
constitutional provisions respecting slavery. You knew that 
in his senatorial contest in Illinois, he had publicly and delib- 
erately declared himself as disfavoring an unconditional repeal 
of the fugitive slave law ; as unpledged against the admission 
of any more slave states ; as unpledged to the abolition of 
slavery in the District of Columbia, and to the prohibition of 
the slave trade between the different states. You knew all 
this when you sought justification for folly in falsehood, and 
are now in the condition of a man obliged to utter a dozen 
untruths to save his first false statement from falling into 
hopeless disgrace. 

I recur to the question, what have we of the North done by 
way of aggression, usurpation, or abuse of power, which can 
be urged in palliation of the treason of the South, or the at- 
tempt to destroy the most utterly benign government that ever 
blessed a people ? 

Concede now, causa argumenti, that the last presidential 
election resulted in the choice of a man whose declared opin- 
ions on the subject of slavery were in opposition to the well- 



14 

ascertained provisions of the Constitution. What then ? The 
upshot of the nnatter is, that a new political party had suc- 
ceeded in electing its candidate, not by reason of its own 
strength, but because of dissensions which distracted its ad- 
versary. The opponents of Mr. Lincoln and of his political 
sentiments, had a clear working majority in both houses of 
Congress, and the President elect, for two years at least, could 
wield but a nominal sceptre. He could not even distribute 
the spoils of success. The South knew and understood this ; 
knew that the supreme legislative and judicial power were in 
its own srasp and interest, and yet, with a duplicity even 
more remarkable for weakness than meanness, abandons its 
post, and flaunts in the face of an astonished age its appre- 
hensions that the guarantees of the Constitution are in danger 
of being destroyed, and its rights under it, trampled upon and 
denied ; then, with an audacity of profaneness, unequalled in 
the annals of blasphemy, appeals to the Supreme Judge of 
the Universe for the purity and rectitude of its intentions. 

Upon the election of Mr. Lincoln, produced, as I have 
shown, by the South itself, treason, which had been hatch- 
ing in secrecy and sin, exhibited a hostile front to the country 
and the Constitution. South Carolina, the hot-bed of disloyalty ; 
ever vain, self-glorious and troublesome, led the way. The na- 
tional fortress erected in her harbor at the national expense, 
and defended by a mere handful of our soldiers, was exposed 
to the murderous fire of six thousand perjured scions of chiv- 
alry, and the national ensign — our hitherto untarnished flag — 
shot away from its staff, and a bastard rag run up in its dis- 
honored place. 

The first overt act of trea-on was committed ! The bad ex- 
ample set by South Carolina was imitated by other states, until 
step by step, armed resistance to the constituted tribunals of 
the country, was substituted for obedience to the laws of the 
land, and civil war, with all its attendant horrors, was forced 
upon us. 

Enough has been shown to prove rebellion disentitled to 



15 

success. It is not an appeal to justice ; it is a resort to force 
and fraud ; and unless mankind are prepared to confound dis- 
tinctions between fair and foul, between right and wrong, be- 
tween good and bad ; unless our liberties are indeed the sport 
and at the mercy of unscrupulous and selfish demagogues, and 
unless this world was made for the Catilines, the Borgias, and 
the Machiavellis of the race, surely this unholy crusade against 
an enlightened and paternal government, should not be favored 
with success. 

But how will the struggle terminate? Will the treason 
succeed ? "Will it ? 

" Oh, country, marvel of the earth ! 

Oh, realm to sudden greatness grown ! 
The age that gloried in thy birth, 

Shall it behold thee overthrown ? 
Shall traitors lay that greatness low ? 
No ! Land of Hope and Blessing, No ! 

" Our humming marts, our iron ways, 

Our wind-tossed woods on mountain crest, 

The hoarse Atlantic, with his bays, 
The calm, broad ocean of the West, 

And Mississippi's torrent flow, 

And loud Niagara, answer, No ! 

" And we, who wear thy glorious name, 

Shall we, like cravens, stand apart, 
When those whom thou hast trusted, aim 

The death blow at thy generous heart ? 
Forth goes the batte-cry, and lo ! 
Hosts rise in harness, shouting. No !" 

It must terminate in shame and disaster to those who so 
wantonly paltered with allegiance and imbrued their traitorous 
hands in brothers' blood. It must so terminate because of con- 
trolling moral and material considerations applicable to it. 
The time has not gone by when the success of a cause may 
reasonably be estimated by its claims on truth, honor, and 
justice. These are still, and ever will be, cardinal to success ; 
their absence from any enterprise may be taken as evidence 
that it will come to naught. 



16 

"^For right is right, since God is God, 
And right the day must win ; 
To doubt would be disloyalty, 
To falter, would be sin.'' 

However delayed the final victory may be — however impe- 
ded by repulse or intermediate defeat — the end is as assured 
as though the last gun had been fired, or the last sabre drawn, 
in the flush of ultimate triumph. And this not alone or so 
much because we are numerically stronger than the foe, but 
because " right the day must win." The mathematics of 
morals have as much to do with armies as the tactics of Scott 
or Hardie. " Courage must be born of conscience," and 
" Thrice is he armed who hath his quarrel just." A sense of 
right in men enables them to achieve acts of valor, which 
no mere physical capacity could ever accomplish. The pur- 
pose that is begotten of patriotism and duty carries with it an 
energy, resistless as the lightning and certain as fate. Cow- 
ardice is the natural ally of crime ; wrong-doing and fear, are, 
to each other, as the cloud and the rain. " The wicked flee 
when no man pursueth," It is " the thief doth fear each bush 
an officer ;" and it is because of this moral power inherent in a 
good cause, that the Union arms must succeed. If the United 
States w^ere prosecuting this war to gratify the lust of empire, 
or to satiate revenge, or to deprive a people of any of the bles- 
sings of civilization or Christianity, or to fasten upon them 
chains of servitude, we might well have misgivings as to the 
issue. We are not fighting for these, or any of these. We 
are fighting to conquer a peace, to subdue a rebellion, to extin- 
guish a treason, to save a country and preserve its liberties. 
We are fighting on holy ground, for the ark of constitutional 
freedom. We are fighting for the lands which contain the dust 
of our fathers, through which our broad rivers run, and over 
which our towering mountains cast their protecting shadow. 
We are fighting to relieve liberty — beleagured in the house of 
its professed friends — and firm, and free, and one forever, have 
sworn 



/^c 



17 

*' By our children's golden future, 
By our fathers' stainless shield : 
That which God and heroes left us, 
Wc will never, never yield ! 

When to this moral aspect of the struggle, we add circum- 
stances of material or physical advantage, it does not require 
the gift of prophecy to foretell the end. 

And first, there never has been, in history, an instance of a 
northern race permanently defeated by a southen one. The 
influences of climate, the traits of character transmitted by- 
race, or whatever other subtle cause may be assigned by stu- 
dents of nature or philosophy, have been sufficient always to 
produce the result. 

From the time of Attila, or even earlier ; from the days 
when the monarchs of Assyria over-run Asia, and the Pharaohs 
of Egypt conquered Nubia and Abyssinia, there has been no 
grand exception to this general law. Whenever Ihe north was 
fairly pitted against the south, the south succumbed. Wit- 
ness even the fall of the Roman Empire, when the incursions 
of Goths and Yandals overturned the work of the Cfesars ; 
witness the expulsion of the Moors from Spain ; witness the 
superiority of northern races, as manifested in the cru- 
sades ; witness Poland swallowed up, despite of heroic resist- 
ance, by Russia ; witness the defeat and decline, both long 
continued, of the Moslem rule ; witness Spain and Italy, con- 
quered again and again by France, and France herself always 
beaten, when really matched against England. 

And will the stars in their courses now fight for Sisera ? Will 
the order of nature be disturbed for the southern race on this 
continent? Have not southern races heretofore established in 
America already melted away before the superior prowess, or 
mettle, or skill, or endurance, of northerners ? Has not Mex- 
ico confessed herself subject to this law ? Do not Louisiana, 
and Florida, and Texas, and California, attest that, no matter 
by whom settled, and by whom claimed, they must belong to 
the descendants of northern races ? Who imagines that their 
future history will^ in this respect, belie their past. 

2 



18 

The south has chosen to throw down the gauntlet, and long 
as we delayed, bitterly as we regretted the necessity, the 
gauge is accepted, ^he fight is one to which, unless Nature 
contradicts herself, there can only be one result. The cold, 
steady determination of the temperate zone, will, now as ever, 
be more than a match for the impetuous but transient enthu- 
siasm of those who come from the regions of the equator. 
Snow cools fire, but fire never inflames ice. 

There are, however, other and yet more material reasons 
to predict a victory for the Union ; reasons that need no phil- 
osophy of race, nor historical knowledge, to aid in their dis- 
covery or application. The simple reason that is told in Rob 
Roy's song, that 

" They will take who have the power, 
And they will keep icho cmiP 

Nations have sometimes ere now had right on their side 
and seemed to fail. Exceptions may have been apparent, 
though not real, even to the rule just referred to ; but it has 
been when the preponderance of power has been so terrible 
that there was no resisting it ; it was because a greater rule 
came into play. This rule will help us now. We think we 
have Providence on our side : so, perhaps, the south think of 
themselves ; but we know we have the heaviest artillery, and 
" Hercules himself must yield to odds." 

To back our confidence in our cause, we have the mightiest 
armies, the largest hosts, the best-equipped soldiers, the most 
terrible engines of war. It is a contest between twenty mil- 
lions and eight millions, and of the eight at least two are 
wishing us to succeed. It is a contest between those who 
are strong in wealth of every sort — in capital and the products 
of labor — in the results of skill and the achievements of phil- 
osophy—in the hardihood that comes from exercise of every 
faculty, physical or mental — in the confidence that results 
from a knowledge of this superiority — in resources that, by a 
Gomparisoa with those of our enemy, or of any people that 



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ever went to war, are inexhaustible. Supplies of men and 
means pour in till government is embarrassed to know what 
to do with them. We have generals instructed in the best 
schools of modern warfare, and troops, at last pronounced by 
competent and impartial judges, worthy of comparison with 
the best-disciplined armies of continental Europe. 

What does our enemy oppose ? Not what he did oppose a 
year ago ; but what does he oppose now ? Large armies, 
doubtless, composed in part of desperate and brave men, who 
fight knowing that defeat is ruin — but armies that cannot be 
replenished. Their all is staked on the hazard of a single 
throw ; lue can double our armies in ninety days. Their 
stock of offensive weapons was at the outset equal to ours, for 
they stole the best we had ; but we have taken back the 
stolen property, and they have no more arsenals to rob ; no 
foundries where they can cast cannon on which they dare 
rely ; no outlet or inlet now by which foreign sympathies can 
supply the resources they have not in themselves. Their 
cities are desolate. Their country is in part laid waste ; for 
no army, friendly or hostile, passes over a country without 
devastating its fields, and spreading ruin among its inhabi- 
tants. Its people is impoverished. Its currency is worthless. 
We are constantly producing new inventions, increasing our 
power, infusing into our gunnery new principles, and into our 
guns new force. Theij^ if by chance they hit upon a principle, 
have no means to apply it, and blow up their Merrimacs 
while we cover the rivers and seas with Monitors. They mass 
their armies only to withdraw them before yet greater masses, 
and throw up mighty fortifications only to desert them before 
still greater threatenings. If in the field they attack us and 
fight well, it is yet ever with one result. An unexpected 
movement may catch us unawares and do us harm ; but our 
steadier and more resolute men never fail to find their recu- 
perative energy, and demonstrate their real courage by wring- 
ing a final victory from what at first seemed defeat and over- 
throw. 



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